Jeff Weintraub

Thursday, January 31, 2008

"Sleepwalking into a surveillance society" (Timothy Garton Ash)

The piece below is about Britain, but its implications aren't at all restricted to Britain. Growing threats to privacy are our problem, too. Some highlights:

This has got to stop. Britain's snooper state is getting completely out of hand. We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society, and we must wake up. [....] The human rights group Privacy International rates Britain as an "endemic surveillance society", along with China and Russia, whereas Germany scores much better. [....]

The fantastic advance of information and communications technology gives the state - and private companies as well - technical possibilities of which the Stasi could only dream. Most of your life is now mapped electronically, minute by minute, centimetre by centimetre, through your mobile phone calls, your emails, your web searches, your credit card purchases, your involuntary appearances on CCTV, and so on. [....]

Nor are governments the only snoopers--as Timothy Garton Ash just noted in passing, but might have emphasized more strongly.

We therefore need to strengthen the protection of data, privacy and civil rights simply to remain as free as we were before. As technology lifts the sea level of information flow, we have to build up the dykes. [....]

=> Some other relevant pieces have been usefully collected by people whose e-mail newsletters I get:

=> Of course, there are real dilemmas involved here. Timothy Garton Ash accepts, for example, that coping with threats from contemporary mega-terrorism may require "some extra surveillance and prevention powers," and in the process "the balance between security and liberty" might even need to be "recalibrated" a bit. And that's just part of the story. The growth of the "database society" and of other techniques of surveillance and information-collection carries with it all sorts of potential benefits--in terms of efficiency, convenience, health, and other concerns as well as security and public safety--that come with potential dangers. But decisions about how to deal with these dilemmas need to be made on the basis of serious and informed public judgments, rather than allowing these matters to be settled by default behind our backs. As usual--paradoxical as it may sound--protecting privacy and individual autonomy, which ought to be an urgent priority for all of us, requires open public discussion of the issues at stake and collective regulation by laws and mores.

This has got to stop. Britain's snooper state is getting completely out of hand. We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society, and we must wake up. When the Stasi started spying on me, as I moved around East Germany 30 years ago, I travelled on the assumption that I was coming from one of the freest countries in the world to one of the least free. I don't think I was wrong then, but I would certainly be wrong now. Today, the people of East Germany are much less spied upon than the people of Britain. The human rights group Privacy International rates Britain as an "endemic surveillance society", along with China and Russia, whereas Germany scores much better.

An official report by Britain's interception of communications commissioner has just revealed that nearly 800 public bodies are between them making an average of nearly 1,000 requests a day for "communications data", including actual phone taps, mobile phone records, email or web search histories, not to mention old-fashioned snail mail. The Home Office website notes that all communication service providers "may be served with a notice by the secretary of state requiring them to maintain a permanent intercept capability. In practice, agreement is always reached by consultation and negotiation." How reassuring.

The fantastic advance of information and communications technology gives the state - and private companies as well - technical possibilities of which the Stasi could only dream. Most of your life is now mapped electronically, minute by minute, centimetre by centimetre, through your mobile phone calls, your emails, your web searches, your credit card purchases, your involuntary appearances on CCTV, and so on. Had the East German secret police had these snooping super-tools, my Stasi file would have measured at least 3,000 pages, not a mere 325.

We therefore need to strengthen the protection of data, privacy and civil rights simply to remain as free as we were before. As technology lifts the sea level of information flow, we have to build up the dykes. To a limited extent, this has been happening; some legal data protection safeguards have been improved. Our stalwart information commissioner, Richard Thomas, has fought a valiant battle to protect what the Germans call, with portentous profundity, the right to informational self-determination. A valiant battle, but a losing one - as the commissioner himself acknowledges. The warning that we are "sleepwalking into a surveillance society" comes from him.

For even as he tries to strengthen the dykes, more powerful arms of government are busy tearing them down: in the name of fighting terrorism, crime, fraud, child molestation, drugs, religious extremism, racial abuse, tax evasion, speeding, illegal parking, fly-tipping, leaving too many garbage bags outside your home, and any other "risk" that any of those nearly 800 public (busy)bodies feels called upon to "protect" us from. Well, thank you, nanny - but kindly eff off to East Germany. I'd rather stay a bit more free, even if means being a bit less safe.

Yes, I recognise that the threat from homegrown suicide bombers - like those who struck London on July 7 2005, and extremists who have been picked up since, including the recently convicted would-be beheader of a British soldier - is particularly difficult to detect. I accept that it requires some extra surveillance and prevention powers. The balance between security and liberty needs to be recalibrated. But in the last decade the British government has erred too far on the side of what is alleged to be increased security.

An over-mighty executive, authoritarian busybody instincts at all levels of government, a political culture of "commonsense" bureaucratic judgments, rather than codified rights protected by supreme courts and, until recently, a gung-ho press forever calling for "something to be done": this fateful combination has made Britain a dark outrider among liberal democracies.

The birthplace of laissez-faire liberalism has morphed into the database state. We have more CCTV cameras than anyone. We have the largest DNA database anywhere. Plans are far advanced to centralise all our medical records and introduce the most elaborate biometric ID cards in the world. All this from a government which, having collected so much data on us, goes around losing it like a late-night drunk spreading the contents of his pockets down the street. Twenty-five million people's details mislaid by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs; at least 100,000 more on an awol Royal Navy laptop; and so it goes on.

Meanwhile, the government has just laid before parliament its latest counter-terrorism bill. Besides the notorious proposal to increase the period of detention without charge to 42 days, this includes provisions that, as the attached official notes explain, allow anyone to give information to the intelligence services "regardless of any duty to keep the information private or of any other restriction" (other than those mentioned in a pair of elastic subclauses). Such information can then be shared or disclosed by that service more or less at will.

This will not do; and even the staunchest supporters of the smack of firm government are beginning to say as much. The Daily Mail, that prince of firm-smackers, yesterday ran a leading article which concluded that "Under this government - of whom the Stasi would have been proud - the balance between state power and individual liberty has been outrageously skewed. It must be restored." This is something on which press and politicians of left and right are beginning to agree.

Of course that flourish about the Stasi is hyperbole. As someone who actually lived under the Stasi, I know we're nowhere near that. But the amount of information collected and shared - not to mention lost - by the British government far exceeds the Stasi's modest 160km of paper files. The potential for it to be abused, in the wrong hands, is simply enormous. Liberty is not preserved simply by putting our trust in the good intentions of our rulers, civil servants and spooks. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

My sense is that the tide is just beginning to turn in British public, published and parliamentary opinion. I hope the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Labour backbenchers and the House of Lords will between them give the new bill the roasting it deserves. Some of our watchdog commissioners and more independent-minded judges are already sounding the alarm. If the government were still to be so foolish as to try to introduce the new ID cards before the next election, it could be to Gordon Brown what the poll tax was to Margaret Thatcher. Comprehensive, compulsory ID cards would directly impinge on every single citizen; this is just the kind of thing the British like to get bloody-minded about.

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has said he would go to jail rather than accept an ID card of this intrusive kind. So would I. And so, I believe, would many thousands of our fellow-citizens. (There's a good website called NO2ID where you can join the fray.) Which is why, I suspect, the government won't be so foolish. But we need to draw the line well before ID cards. There are liberties that we have already given away, while sleeping, and we must claim them back.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Newsbreak: Edwards will drop out of the race today

Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voter's sympathies but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has learned. The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST event in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two of his advisers. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning — Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

I confess that I am a little surprised about this. I felt pretty confident that Edwards would stick it out through the Democratic convention--which might turn out to be a genuinely contested convention, where delegates pledged to Edwards could play a decisive role. The fact that I seem to have been mistaken about this is not so startling, since I don't pretend to much expertise as a political handicapper. But a number of other analysts who know more about such things than I do also seem to have guessed wrong. (As Josh Marshall plausibly asked just a week ago, "Seriously, why should John Edwards drop out of the race?".)

What does this mean for the other Democratic candidates? That's not clear. As I noted a few weeks ago:

Most commentary about the Democratic race has taken it for granted that Edwards's continued presence in the race helps Clinton, because he "splits the anti-Clinton vote." I don't pretend to any great expertise on these matters, but I'm not so sure. The kinds of people who have been voting for Edwards--for example, working-class Democrats, union members, and so on--have also been supporting Clinton more than Obama. I suspect that if Edwards were to be knocked out of the race, Obama and Clinton might simply split the Edwards voters.

On the other hand, all this might change to some extent if Edwards strongly endorses either Obama or Clinton, though that's not certain either. According to Greg Sargent at TPM:

An Edwards adviser confirms to me that John Edwards won't be making any endorsement "for the moment."

However, this source refused to rule out the possibility of an endorsement before Feb. 5th, which is six days away. If Edwards were to throw his support to either Hillary or Obama before that date, the impact could obviously be huge.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Genocide Prevention: 60 Years of Abject Failure (Eric Reeves)

This piece by Eric Reeves is very much to the point, and it's hard to argue with his central conclusions:

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. [....] But in the long and too often darkened years that followed, the Convention has never prevented a single genocide, even as "prevention" receives pride of place in the ponderous convention title. Despite the many instances in which international action was desperately required, the demanding words of the Convention have always rung hollow [....]

To be sure, whether genocide occurred in a particular place or time is debatable. [....] But if the primary purpose of the Genocide Convention is prevention, the UN and international community must act before there is juridical or historical certainty. We are obliged to act when there is compelling evidence of large-scale destruction of a "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such." We might wish for a more detailed account of the mechanism for prevention than is offered in Article 8 of the Convention, but the obligation to act is clear.

Instead, failure beyond doubt, beyond mitigation is too often in evidence, whether we look to Bosnia, Rwanda, or Kurdish Iraq. Continuing international acquiescence before genocide is not a matter of an imperfect document but of moral cowardice or a ghastly solipsism.

=> The real question is whether we should stop pretending and simply give up on the Genocide Convention--an option that several people have suggested to me recently, from a sense of disillusionment or despair that can't easily be dismissed--or somehow try to do better.

I favor the second option myself--as does Eric Reeves, for reasons he explains in a recorded interview with the Christian Science Monitor's Opinion Editor, which you can access and listen to HERE. [Update: Norman Geras also offers a thoughtful and cogent response.]

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 9, 1948, the Convention reflects the tireless work of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish linguist and Jew who had survived the Holocaust. But in the long and too often darkened years that followed, the Convention has never prevented a single genocide, even as "prevention" receives pride of place in the ponderous convention title. Despite the many instances in which international action was desperately required, the demanding words of the Convention have always rung hollow:

"The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish."

To be sure, whether genocide occurred in a particular place or time is debatable. Was Cambodia in the 1970s a genocide or a massive and brutal political purging guided by ideological madness? Was Nigeria's Biafra region the site of genocide in the late 1960s or self-inflicted starvation engineered by Biafran separatists? Was the Pakistani occupation of Bangladesh in the early 1970s a genocide?

But if the primary purpose of the Genocide Convention is prevention, the UN and international community must act before there is juridical or historical certainty. We are obliged to act when there is compelling evidence of large-scale destruction of a "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such." We might wish for a more detailed account of the mechanism for prevention than is offered in Article 8 of the Convention, but the obligation to act is clear.

Instead, failure beyond doubt, beyond mitigation is too often in evidence, whether we look to Bosnia, Rwanda, or Kurdish Iraq. Continuing international acquiescence before genocide is not a matter of an imperfect document but of moral cowardice or a ghastly solipsism.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Sudan's Darfur region. Only a hopelessly constrained reading of the Genocide Convention, or a refusal to look at the systematic nature of ongoing ethnic destruction, can sustain diffidence or agnosticism.

The National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum continues to commit all the genocidal acts enumerated in Article 2 of the Convention, even if one such act now has particular prominence: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." We need look no further than the "systematic" denial of humanitarian access to targeted African ethnic groups that has been reported by UN and nongovernmental organizations for more than four years. While violence may have declined from the ferocious levels of 2003-04, it continues, if in more chaotic fashion.

And even this chaos in Darfur is "by design," as a recent report from Human Rights Watch authoritatively demonstrates. Nor were the consequences of Khartoum's genocidal counterinsurgency campaign difficult to discern early on in the conflict. Four years ago, it was clear that in the absence of international humanitarian intervention many tens of thousands of civilians would die. Today the death toll – from violence, disease, and malnutrition – is measured in the hundreds of thousands, and the future looks just as grim.

If the slowly deploying UN/African Union force fails to halt the violence, or aborts – a possibility explicitly raised by head of UN peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guéhenno – then genocidal destruction will almost certainly accelerate and hundreds of thousands more will probably die. If the international community fails to commit the resources required by this extraordinarily difficult mission, the lack of security will become intolerable. Humanitarian groups – the essential lifeline for more than 4.2 million human beings in Darfur – will be obliged to suspend operations or withdraw. A critically weakened population could face a cataclysm of death and suffering.

More than any genocide following the Holocaust, Darfur's killing fields are the measure of whether, 60 years after its ratification, the UN Convention has any remaining force or meaning. The debacle of deployment in Darfur argues that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations desperately requires a substantial, robust standing force, prepared to deploy urgently to protect civilian populations facing geno-cide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. Actual deployment would be at the request of the Secretary-General, and while a two-thirds majority of the Security Council should be formally required, deployment must not be held hostage to the veto of the five permanent members. This requires substantial revision of the UN Charter, but fundamental changes at the UN are widely recognized as critical for the organization to remain relevant in the 21st century.

Darfur reveals the consequences of having no such international force. If a ruthless regime of génocidaires can insulate itself from international action simply by claiming "national sovereignty," then Mr. Lemkin's labors will have been in vain. And a Genocide Convention that remains impotent in the face of ongoing, fully reported genocidal destruction will mark in us the deepest hypocrisy.

• Eric Reeves, a professor of English language and literature at Smith College, is the author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide."

Nature shock - Mystery of the killer dolphins

See below for an interesting report (picked up by Andrew Sullivan) about some non-cuddly traits of the friendly and intelligent bottlenose dolphin. It reminded me of some idle musings about dolphins that occurred to me several decades ago.

=> Then as now, we constantly hear about how charming and likable dolphins are, and most of the time that seems to be true. Let me be clear: I'm genuinely fond of dolphins. What follows is a purely analytical puzzle.

In the things I read about dolphins, one piece of evidence offered to demonstrate their good-natured benevolence was the claim that dolphins sometimes save drowning sailors by pushing them in toward shore. That sounds nice of them, and I have no reason to doubt that there are such cases..

But then I couldn't help wondering ... what if this is just a misleading impression created by sampling bias? That is, what if a dolphin sees a drowning sailor as a kind of bathtub toy, and enjoys pushing him (or her) around in the water in a spirit of good-natured play? And let's imagine--to continue the hypothesis--that such sailors would get pushed around randomly in different directions. That would mean that about a quarter of the sailors get pushed toward shore, while the other three-quarters get pushed either out to sea or parallel to the coastline. Well, the only sailors we hear from afterward are the ones who got pushed toward shore, right? The other 75% are eliminated from the sample, so to speak. So maybe this impression that the dolphins are doing it to help the sailors is just an unwarranted inference produced by systematically biased data? (After all, what have humans ever done for dolphins that would make them so eager to help us out?)

All this is just speculation, of course ... but I wouldn't want try getting an experiment designed to test this hypothesis approved by an IRB.

=> At all events, getting back to observable reality (and real science) ... the story below comes with a striking video.

New evidence has been compiled by marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more disturbingly, on its own kind.

When tell-tale teeth-marks were identified, the dolphin - the mammal classified as one of the world's most intelligent, sensitive and sociable creatures - became the official suspect.

Confirmation of the murders came by way of two shocking films shot by holidaymakers.

The first was initially believed to show a dolphin fishing for salmon - until closer examination revealed a relentless attack on a porpoise, its body spinning round with such force that its back was broken and its soft tissue shattered.

Marine experts now believe that these displays of attacks on non-rival, non-predatory, peace-loving porpoises and, more shockingly, of dolphin infanticide, may have always taken place.

It is only now, with dolphins' more human-friendly behaviour taking them closer to tourist boats and beaches, that the violence is being witnessed first hand. Until the shocking realisation, dolphin-watchers in America had believed they were watching the mammals at play with their young.

Four years ago, members of Scots charity the Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit discovered a lifeless porpoise near the harbour at Whitehills, near Banff.

The team described the mammals' injuries as "perhaps the worst example of inter-specific aggression any of us had ever seen. This young female had literally had the life beaten out of her."

Inspection showed multiple lacerations and puncture wounds all over the body which could not have been caused by any other attacker than a bottle-nosed dolphin.

Two of these fatal attacks by dolphins feature in the documentary The Dolphin Murders, being shown in the channel Five series Nature Shock on Tuesday, January 29.

Watching the films, Aberdeen marina biologist Dr Ben Wilson explains yet another shocking phenomenon - that the dolphins use their incredible ultra sound abilties to home in on the vital organs of their victims that will cause most damage.

"The blows are carefully targeted," says Dr Wilson, who is a member of the Scottish Association for Marine Science. "And the attacks are sustained, sometimes up to 30 minutes.

"The film was a key piece of evidence. It crystalised our suspicions. We realised the dolphins' victim was trying to escape from being attacked with such force that any one single blow could kill it.

"It was, Oh my God!, the animals I've been studying for the last 10 years are killing these porpoises."

Theories abound on the reason behind the mammal murders. These have included territorial clashes and feuds over food resources. But food is not in short supply and the victims are not just chased away but pursued to the death.

Another belief is that dolphin attacks on their young may be down to mating instincts, because when her calf dies the female dolphin is ready for mating again. But the experts are still not positive that it is only males who do the attacking.

And, incredibly, they can only guess that the attacks by bottle-nosed dolphins on Scotland's harbour porpoises is some kind of bizarre 'target practice.'

For the one common link between the attacks here and America is that the victims are of a similar size and weight.

Perhaps the dolphins' instincts has them practising the same skills required to separate a porpoise from its school, pursue it and kill it as are needed for attacks on its own kind.

Nearly half of the harbour porpoises' bodies examined have died as a result of the dolphin attacks.

Perhaps some answers will be found as Dr Wilson - who has written several research papers on dolphins - and his team continue their Bottlenose Dolphin Project throughout the Scottish waters this winter. The field work is expected to end in the summer.

But as the experts of the Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit are forced to declare: "These killings represent yet another example of the hard brutality and evolutionary pressures of the marine world."

Monday, January 28, 2008

A useful update and explanation from Nick Kristof of the New York Times.

As Kristof properly emphasizes, this activist campaign is not promoting a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Instead, the idea is to use the public attention that will be concentrated on the Olympics to help mobilize international pressure on the Chinese government to end its role as a major source of political, diplomatic, and economic backing for the genocidal regime in Khartoum.

There’s a growing recognition that perhaps the best way of averting hundreds of thousands more deaths in Sudan is to use the leverage of the Olympics to shame China into more responsible behavior.

The central problem is that in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing is financing, diplomatically protecting and supplying the arms for the first genocide of the 21st century. China is the largest arms supplier to Sudan [....] China also uses the threat of its veto on the Security Council to block U.N. action against Sudan so that there is a growing risk of a catastrophic humiliation for the U.N. itself. [....]

It is true that since the start of the “Genocide Olympics” campaign (www.dreamfordarfur.org) a year ago, China has been more helpful, and it’s only because of Chinese pressure on Khartoum that U.N. peacekeepers were admitted to Darfur at all. But the basic reality is that China continues to side with Sudan — it backed Sudan again after it ambushed the U.N. peacekeepers — and Sudan feels protected enough that it goes on thumbing its nose at the international community.

Just a few days ago, Sudan appointed Musa Hilal, a founding leader of the Arab militia known as the janjaweed, to a position in the central government. This is the man who was once quoted as having expressed gratitude for “the necessary weapons and ammunition to exterminate the African tribes in Darfur.”

Other countries also must do much more, but China is crucial. If Beijing were to suspend all transfers of arms and spare parts to Sudan until a peace deal is reached in Darfur, then that would change the dynamic. President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan would be terrified — especially since he is now preparing to resume war with South Sudan — and would realize that China is no longer willing to let its Olympics be stained by Darfuri blood. [....]

The Beijing Olympics this summer were supposed to be China’s coming-out party, celebrating the end of nearly two centuries of weakness, poverty and humiliation.

Instead, China’s leaders are tarnishing their own Olympiad by abetting genocide in Darfur and in effect undermining the U.N. military deployment there. The result is a growing international campaign to brand these “The Genocide Olympics.”

This is not a boycott of the Olympics. But expect Darfur-related protests at Chinese Embassies, as well as banners and armbands among both athletes and spectators. There’s a growing recognition that perhaps the best way of averting hundreds of thousands more deaths in Sudan is to use the leverage of the Olympics to shame China into more responsible behavior.

The central problem is that in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing is financing, diplomatically protecting and supplying the arms for the first genocide of the 21st century. China is the largest arms supplier to Sudan, officially selling $83 million in weapons, aircraft and spare parts to Sudan in 2005, according to Amnesty International USA. That is the latest year for which figures are available.

China provided Sudan with A-5 Fantan bomber aircraft, helicopter gunships, K-8 military training/attack aircraft and light weapons used in Sudan’s proxy invasion of Chad last year. China also uses the threat of its veto on the Security Council to block U.N. action against Sudan so that there is a growing risk of a catastrophic humiliation for the U.N. itself.

Sudan feels confident enough with Chinese backing that on Jan. 7, the Sudanese military ambushed a clearly marked U.N. convoy of peacekeepers in Darfur. Sudan claimed the attack was a mistake, but diplomats and U.N. professionals are confident that this was a deliberate attack ordered by the Sudanese leaders to put the U.N. in its place.

Sudan has already barred units from Sweden, Norway, Nepal, Thailand and other countries from joining the U.N. force. It has banned night flights, dithered on a status-of-forces agreement, held up communications equipment and refused to allow the U.N. to bring in foreign helicopters. The growing fear is that the U.N. force will be humiliated in Sudan as it was in Rwanda and Bosnia, causing enormous damage to international peacekeeping.

Another possible sign of Sudan’s confidence: an American diplomat, John Granville, was ambushed and murdered in Khartoum early this month. Many in the diplomatic and intelligence community believe that such an assassination could not happen in Khartoum unless elements of the government were involved.

Chinese officials argue that they are engaging in quiet diplomacy with Sudan’s leaders and that this is the best way to seek a solution in Darfur. They note that Sudan has other backers, and that China’s influence is limited.

It is true that since the start of the “Genocide Olympics” campaign (www.dreamfordarfur.org) a year ago, China has been more helpful, and it’s only because of Chinese pressure on Khartoum that U.N. peacekeepers were admitted to Darfur at all. But the basic reality is that China continues to side with Sudan — it backed Sudan again after it ambushed the U.N. peacekeepers — and Sudan feels protected enough that it goes on thumbing its nose at the international community.

Just a few days ago, Sudan appointed Musa Hilal, a founding leader of the Arab militia known as the janjaweed, to a position in the central government. This is the man who was once quoted as having expressed gratitude for “the necessary weapons and ammunition to exterminate the African tribes in Darfur.”

Other countries also must do much more, but China is crucial. If Beijing were to suspend all transfers of arms and spare parts to Sudan until a peace deal is reached in Darfur, then that would change the dynamic. President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan would be terrified — especially since he is now preparing to resume war with South Sudan — and would realize that China is no longer willing to let its Olympics be stained by Darfuri blood.

Without his Chinese shield, Mr. Bashir would be more likely to make concessions to Darfur rebels and negotiate seriously with them, and he would no longer have political cover to resume war against South Sudan. That would make long-term peace more likely in Darfur and also in South Sudan.

I’m a great fan of China’s achievements, and I’ve often defended Beijing from unfair protectionist rhetoric spouted by American politicians. But those of us who admire China’s accomplishments find it difficult to give credit when Beijing simultaneously underwrites the ultimate crime of genocide.

China deserves an international celebration to mark its historic re-emergence as a major power. But so long as China insists on providing arms to sustain a slaughter based on tribe and skin color, this will remain, sadly, The Genocide Olympics.

You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.

I will start by repeating something I said in February 2007 (HERE), since unfortunately it remains very timely:-------------------------The lack of any serious and effective response to the Darfur atrocity has been a comprehensive failure for the entire "world community," but different parts of it have been guilty in different ways and to different degrees. In some respects, the Arab world bears a special responsibility. The ongoing mass murder, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing of African Muslims in Darfur has been carried out by an Arab-dominated Sudanese government, a member of the Arab League, in the name of a racist Arab-supremacist ideology. What has been the response of the Arab world? Arab governments have given the genocidal Khartoum government unwavering support, and Arab public opinion--with just a few honorable exceptions--has done the same or, at best, has simply ignored the atrocity.

As Joseph Britt pointed out in mid-2005, this response poses an uncomfortable question: "What responsibility do Arabs have to stop genocide being committed by Arabs?" He was not the first to raise this question. As far back as June 2004, an outspoken editorial in the Beirut Daily Star, argued that mass murder in Darfur posed a defining moral and political test for "the Arab Body Politic" and called for a serious and constructive Arab response:

International neglect led to near-genocide a decade ago in Rwanda, while NATO went to war in Kosovo in 1999 for the sake of a few hundred thousand refugees. While the United States is considering formally labeling the Darfur crisis as a genocide in progress, the world - the world beyond the Arab world that is - is justified in asking the following question: "What are the Arabs doing about this atrocity in their own back yard?"

The answer, of course - as usual - is nothing.

The answer is still nothing. In fact, it is worse. Passivity would be bad enough, but Arab governments and large sectors have actually supported the mass murderers and actively opposed any international efforts to restrain them. [....]---------------

=> At the same time, it's important to pay attention to exceptions and dissenting voices. Gene at Harry's Place alerted me to an illuminating account (in the international on-line journal Arab Media & Society) of a conference of Arab journalists in Cairo in April 2007 where many of the participants confronted this scandal with unusual candor and self-criticism.

The author of this piece, who works at the American University in Cairo and studies Arab media, says that he "has never heard a group of Arab journalists so brutally frank in public about the pressures and pitfalls of their own coverage." He also argues that the heated exchanges at this conference expressed a recognition that the coverage of Darfur in the Arab news media--which has been not only inadequate but distorted--is an issue that "bores right to the heart of the mission of Arab journalism and the self-identity of those who practice it."

This piece dates from almost 9 months ago, but it's still news, and still important. Some highlights:

-------------------------There is no issue in Arab journalism today that is more controversial than how the region’s media cover Darfur. [....] Darfur is a hot-button issue in the newsroom not because of the physical danger but because the issue bores right to the heart of the mission of Arab journalism and the self-identity of those who practice it.

That was vividly apparent at a one-day workshop on the crisis organized by the International Crisis Group and hosted by the Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo in April this year and it was evident again, two weeks later, at the 2007 Arab Broadcast Forum, the annual gathering of Arab television executives.

The central issue: “The Arabs see the victims are not Arabs, and we don’t care,” Khaled Ewais, Al Arabiya’s political producer, told the Cairo gathering, which brought together reporters and editors from across the Arab world. Fayez el Sheikh Saleik, Khartoum correspondent of Al-Hayat, concurred: “Sudan is a marginal country when it comes to the Arab region.” [....]

Some pointed to an even more insidious issue: In other regional conflicts, Arabs are the victims. In Darfur, Arab militias are the perpetrators. That’s not a popular topic. [....] [T]there was widespread acknowledgement that Darfur has been the biggest untold story of the Arab world. [....]

Non-journalists like Roland Marchal of the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales in Paris and Khaled Mansour, spokesman for the World Food Program, praised some Western coverage—including that of the BBC and the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof—for putting a human face on the Darfur conflict by focusing on the plight of individuals. Al-Hayat was also singled out as “indefatigable in its continuous coverage of the events in Darfur.” But the overwhelming message was that when most Arab media bother to report on the crisis, they focus on political machinations, not human impact. [....]

But it wasn’t the “experts” alone who were critical. This writer has never heard a group of Arab journalists so brutally frank in public about the pressures and pitfalls of their own coverage.

“We Arab journalists, sorry to say, deal with Darfur as governments do,” said Tahir el-Mardi, Khartoum correspondent for Al Jazeera. “We have 22 agendas on Darfur and the West has one. Arab journalists, to say the truth, are entangled in political issues.” Mohamed Barakat, political editor at the Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar, said that in the Arab world, all politics truly are local: “There is an agenda which is local according to the country in which it takes place.”

Others pointed to the constant talk of Zionist plots and Western conspiracies in Arab coverage of Darfur, the preoccupation with “strategic Arab interests,” and what one political editor called the “fantasies” about a Western oil grab, all of which came at the cost of reporting on the human toll. [JW: Of course, this kind of poisonous bullshit is not confined to Arab discussions of Darfur--we hear plenty of this lunacy in the west, too.]

Al-Gizouli of the Sudanese writer’s union said the history of Arab journalism is to blame. An entire generation of journalists and intellectuals were weaned on the notions of Arab mobilization and confrontation in the face of the imperialist and colonialist aggressor. That legacy is heard in the Darfur coverage. “There is no voice but the battle with Israel and the imperialists. That is what has been fed to the Arab intellectuals. If there is no role for Zionists, [the Arab reporter] creates it from his own imagination and Zionism means conspiracy, the main gallows on which hangs the conscience of the journalists.” [....]

Then there’s the issue every reporter around the world ultimately confronts: How important is the story to the editor and the reader? “Palestine and Lebanon was the priority,” Saleik recalled of his coverage in recent years. “We sent many stories from Darfur, but they didn’t get published.” [....]

The most emotional attack on Arab media coverage of Darfur came from Nabil Kassem, producer/director of Jihad on Horseback, a documentary about Darfur commissioned by Al Arabiya three years ago but killed after pressure from Saudi Arabia. Kassem, who still works for Al Arabiya, was bitter about what he calls “fantasy” reports in the Arab media that Arab tribes were forced to flee attacking Africans and claims that the refugee camps were Zionist propaganda.

“The Arab tribes fleeing from the Africans, where are they?” he asked. “Then I went to the camps the Arab media said didn’t exist.” Kassem said he left his objectivity in the dust of the Darfur desert. “I am speaking as a humanitarian, not a journalist who is neutral,” he told the gathering. “How can anyone go and see millions of displaced people and remain balanced?”

“Until now, I cannot forget what I saw. I left women and children lying there dying.” With tears in his eyes, he confronted the Egyptian editor who had earlier bristled at criticism of Arab coverage and boasted that he, too, had visited Darfur. “Did you see that? Did you see them dying?” Kassem challenged the startled journalist. “Then why didn’t you write it? I am in a rage. Arabs should be ashamed having one million Muslims begging for help. Shame!” (For more on Kassem, listen to my audio interview).

Nabil Hasbani of the International Crisis Group said Al Arabiya largely abandoned Darfur coverage for several years after the documentary was pulled. Most of the channel’s reporting was confined to pieces filed by UN correspondent Talal Haj. There was “no information from the ground,” which “left the audience thinking the UN controls the crisis” and thus, it’s not an Arab issue. [....]

Darfur was also on the agenda at the Arab Broadcast Forum in Abu Dhabi two weeks later, but the discussion was far less frank—possibly because the session was broadcast live on Abu Dhabi TV and Al Jazeera Moubashar. Instead of candid discussion of government restrictions and ethnic biases, news executives, including those from some Western channels, alternated between boasting of their own coverage and kissing up to the head of Sudanese TV, the man with veto power over Sudan visas and Darfur permits.

Still, there were moments of candor.

“I think we have less coverage from Darfur, print and broadcast media. I think sometimes we editorialize many issues in this part of the world, we feel that this is part of our pan-Arab world and we feel we should keep [our] hands off this,” a representative of Kuwait TV told his colleagues.

“If you watch any Arab station any night you will have reporting on Iraq, on Palestine, but it is rare to see news about Darfur. So no there isn’t enough,” concluded Samir Sabbah, head of Middle East media for Reuters TV. [....]-------------------------

Lawrence Pintakis publisher/co-editor of Arab Media & Society and director of the Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo. His most recent book is Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas.

MAY, 2007.There is no issue in Arab journalism today that is more controversial than how the region’s media cover Darfur. Not Iraq, where, according to a new report from the Arab Archives Institute, 52 Arab journalists have lost their lives since 2001; not Palestine, where journalists are caught between Israel and the Palestinians and between Fatah and Hamas; nor Lebanon, where reporters have been in the cross-hairs of rival factions and governments.

Darfur is a hot-button issue in the newsroom not because of the physical danger but because the issue bores right to the heart of the mission of Arab journalism and the self-identity of those who practice it.

That was vividly apparent at a one-day workshop on the crisis organized by the International Crisis Group and hosted by the Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo in April this year and it was evident again, two weeks later, at the 2007 Arab Broadcast Forum, the annual gathering of Arab television executives.

The central issue: “The Arabs see the victims are not Arabs, and we don’t care,” Khaled Ewais, Al Arabiya’s political producer, told the Cairo gathering, which brought together reporters and editors from across the Arab world. Fayez el Sheikh Saleik, Khartoum correspondent of Al-Hayat, concurred: “Sudan is a marginal country when it comes to the Arab region.”

Darfur “not a popular topic” in the Arab World

Some pointed to an even more insidious issue: In other regional conflicts, Arabs are the victims. In Darfur, Arab militias are the perpetrators. That’s not a popular topic.

“The media are directly responsible for this crisis,” an angry representative of the Liberation Front of Darfur told those assembled in Cairo. While few of the journalists were willing to go quite that far, there was widespread acknowledgement that Darfur has been the biggest untold story of the Arab world.

“Arab journalists are working within non-democratic systems, so you can’t expect them to talk about Darfur,” said Saleik of Al-Hayat. The Arab media is “ultimately very interconnected with the ruling system” according to Ahmed Hissou, a Syrian journalist working for the Arabic service of Germany’s Deutsche Welle radio, and Arab governments “do not accept any internal crises, whether religious or ethnic.” As a result, said Kamal al-Gizouli of the Sudanese writer’s union, when they do report on Darfur, Arab media “are talking only about sovereignty when the real issue is the rights of people to live in peace.”

The numbers are grim. More than 250,000 dead; 2.5 million refugees; four million in need of relief assistance. “Why is there no debate in the Arab mass media?” asked Nadim Hasbani, Arab media officer for the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Dr. Amani Tawil of the al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies offered one explanation: “Selective information.” Television, she said, “reflects the special agenda of each government in the Arab region,” while newspapers “have a tendency to marginalize stories about other Arab governments.” Until the recent Saudi initiative on Darfur, Arab regimes—and thus most Arab media—had a hands-off approach to Sudan.

Non-journalists like Roland Marchal of the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales in Paris and Khaled Mansour, spokesman for the World Food Program, praised some Western coverage—including that of the BBC and the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof—for putting a human face on the Darfur conflict by focusing on the plight of individuals. Al-Hayat was also singled out as “indefatigable in its continuous coverage of the events in Darfur.” But the overwhelming message was that when most Arab media bother to report on the crisis, they focus on political machinations, not human impact. “Arab media coverage is like a person on a plane looking down,” said Sudanese Member of Parliament and political activist Salih Mahmoud Osman, while Western coverage portrays the pain of the victims.

Arab journalists express unprecedented self-criticism

But it wasn’t the “experts” alone who were critical. This writer has never heard a group of Arab journalists so brutally frank in public about the pressures and pitfalls of their own coverage.

“We Arab journalists, sorry to say, deal with Darfur as governments do,” said Tahir el-Mardi, Khartoum correspondent for Al Jazeera. “We have 22 agendas on Darfur and the West has one. Arab journalists, to say the truth, are entangled in political issues.” Mohamed Barakat, political editor at the Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar, said that in the Arab world, all politics truly are local: “There is an agenda which is local according to the country in which it takes place.”

Others pointed to the constant talk of Zionist plots and Western conspiracies in Arab coverage of Darfur, the preoccupation with “strategic Arab interests,” and what one political editor called the “fantasies” about a Western oil grab, all of which came at the cost of reporting on the human toll.

Al-Gizouli of the Sudanese writer’s union said the history of Arab journalism is to blame. An entire generation of journalists and intellectuals were weaned on the notions of Arab mobilization and confrontation in the face of the imperialist and colonialist aggressor. That legacy is heard in the Darfur coverage. “There is no voice but the battle with Israel and the imperialists. That is what has been fed to the Arab intellectuals. If there is no role for Zionists, [the Arab reporter] creates it from his own imagination and Zionism means conspiracy, the main gallows on which hangs the conscience of the journalists.”

“The Arab journalist is an offspring of his environment,” agreed Hissou of Deutsche Welle. “We had imperialism and Zionism with double-standards. Arab officials say Bush is jeopardizing Sudan, so Arab journalists must accept this conspiracy.” He read a series of excerpts from Arab coverage that, he claimed, demonstrated that the reporting “is heavily freighted with ideological and political assumptions that … imperil our journalistic neutrality.” Hissou quoted Al-Hayat’s influential columnist Jihad Khazen as writing that the Bush administration and the Israel lobby are using Darfur “as a smokescreen to hide other crimes, from Palestine to Iraq” and Hissou claimed that while Al Jazeera has given substantial coverage to Darfur, “it has invited Arab analysts, writers, and physicians to ridicule all reports transmitted by the global television networks on the various acts of murder, rape, and forced displacement.” El-Mardi of Al Jazeera’s Khartoum bureau countered by saying that the channel covers the crisis “in an objective manner” and “any topic concerning policy in Sudan has the opinion, the facts and the counter-opinion. If it does not, it does not go to air.” However, he added, “Darfur is a political issue in the first instance” and “there is a very thin line between the professional journalist and the political person.”

Ewais of Al Arabiya presented data showing that Arab media devotes a small fraction of the time and space to Darfur as it does to crises like Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, while the Western media gives it significantly more attention. Salih, the Sudanese MP, said covering Darfur “doesn’t prevent us from discussing the humanitarian suffering in Darfur as well.”

“If we say there are violations of human rights in Darfur, we are not denying violations by Israel and the US in Iraq and Palestine,” agreed Al-Gizouli. Still, he lamented, “It is very hard to put Darfur on a par with Arab stories.”

“I know, sometimes the story is complex and difficult to communicate,” Khaled Mansour of the World Food Program told those gathered, “but the Arab media’s coverage of the humanitarian side of the conflict has been very weak” when compared to that of Western news organizations.

Who to blame: money, time or governments?

For many newspapers, money is a big issue when it comes to Darfur. Several Egyptian editors said their publications simply don’t have the resources to cover the crisis properly. But others pointed out that the pan-Arab newspapers and satellite TV channels have plenty of money and a level of professionalism that has brought a human face to other regional tragedies. “Al Jazeera focuses on the human side in Palestine,” said al-Gizouli. “So you have to ask why they don’t do the same in Darfur. There is a double standard on human feelings. Al Jazeera is operated by Arabs so they show sympathy for the Palestinian and Iraqi people and show the dead babies there, but when it comes to Darfur, they don’t. They want to show Arabs always as victims.”

At times the debate grew heated. Some journalists in the audience objected to the constant criticism. “We are here to participate in a discussion about developing better coverage, not to have scorn heaped on us,” an Egyptian editor snapped at one speaker. “I have traveled to Darfur; I am not here to listen to criticism.”

Yet the comment opened a far-ranging discussion about the fact that many Arab news organizations get—and report—a distorted view of Darfur because they visit as part of tours arranged by the Sudanese government which, according to Sudanese columnist Alhaj Warrag, takes the view that “everything in Darfur is a conspiracy of the Zionists” and imposes “redlines” on its own media that mean Sudanese reporters cannot cover anything about violations of human rights, police or security. “I am an Arab and a Muslim and I was nearly ready to accept this,” he said, until he went to the camps “and I met someone who watched his sister being raped by the Janjaweed.”

Barakat of al-Akhbar said guided tours and journalist visits as part of official delegations “pave the way for getting to Darfur but you are besieged by the agenda of this particularly diplomatic mission which means you cannot flee.” The other problem is that such visits present a skewed view. “Most of the journalists invited by the Sudanese government go to camps in good condition that seem like the Hilton hotel but Western journalists go in through Chad and see the real situation,” said el-Mardi from Al Jazeera.

As with the Western media, Arab journalists face huge logistical hurdles in breaking out of the guided tour approach to covering Darfur. Saleik, the Al-Hayat Khartoum correspondent, recalled that for a July 2004 visit to Darfur, he went on a cross-Africa odyssey from Khartoum to Nairobi, to Lagos, to Chad, and finally into Darfur. “The nature of the crisis is different from Iraq or Palestine,” he told the gathering. “In Darfur, you can walk a long time in the desert to reach the news, but in Palestine it’s easy.”

Could editors do more?

Then there’s the issue every reporter around the world ultimately confronts: How important is the story to the editor and the reader? “Palestine and Lebanon was the priority,” Saleik recalled of his coverage in recent years. “We sent many stories from Darfur, but they didn’t get published.”

“There is the problem of who compiles the news,” explained Hassan Satti of Asharq Alawsat,pointing to psychological, cultural and religious factors which can shape an editor’s outlook. “Coverage is with the spirit of the editor and he can fall victim to his traditions,” he said.

As one Egyptian journalist whispered to me in an aside, “You need to know who you are working for.” He also said that when he tried to write stories about Darfur from Cairo, his editor would ask suspiciously, “Why are you writing this? What is your motive?”

The most emotional attack on Arab media coverage of Darfur came from Nabil Kassem, producer/director of Jihad on Horseback, a documentary about Darfur commissioned by Al Arabiya three years ago but killed after pressure from Saudi Arabia. Kassem, who still works for Al Arabiya, was bitter about what he calls “fantasy” reports in the Arab media that Arab tribes were forced to flee attacking Africans and claims that the refugee camps were Zionist propaganda.

“The Arab tribes fleeing from the Africans, where are they?” he asked. “Then I went to the camps the Arab media said didn’t exist.” Kassem said he left his objectivity in the dust of the Darfur desert. “I am speaking as a humanitarian, not a journalist who is neutral,” he told the gathering. “How can anyone go and see millions of displaced people and remain balanced?”

“Until now, I cannot forget what I saw. I left women and children lying there dying.” With tears in his eyes, he confronted the Egyptian editor who had earlier bristled at criticism of Arab coverage and boasted that he, too, had visited Darfur. “Did you see that? Did you see them dying?” Kassem challenged the startled journalist. “Then why didn’t you write it? I am in a rage. Arabs should be ashamed having one million Muslims begging for help. Shame!” (For more on Kassem, listen to my audio interview).

Nabil Hasbani of the International Crisis Group said Al Arabiya largely abandoned Darfur coverage for several years after the documentary was pulled. Most of the channel’s reporting was confined to pieces filed by UN correspondent Talal Haj. There was “no information from the ground,” which “left the audience thinking the UN controls the crisis” and thus, it’s not an Arab issue.

Al Jazeera also largely ignored the crisis until its coverage “changed drastically” between 2004 and 2006. In recent years, Al Arabiya’s coverage has likewise dramatically stepped up. “We run very critical coverage of Darfur now. We don’t care who we offend,” one executive of the channel told me. Why then, I asked, had Jihad on Horseback been killed and other Darfur reporting abandoned? “Back then,” he said with a sardonic smile, “we cared.” That Al Arabiya’s news executives shared the dais with producer Kassem said much about that change of viewpoint.

The debate continues in Abu Dhabi

Darfur was also on the agenda at the Arab Broadcast Forum in Abu Dhabi two weeks later, but the discussion was far less frank—possibly because the session was broadcast live on Abu Dhabi TV and Al Jazeera Moubashar. Instead of candid discussion of government restrictions and ethnic biases, news executives, including those from some Western channels, alternated between boasting of their own coverage and kissing up to the head of Sudanese TV, the man with veto power over Sudan visas and Darfur permits.

Still, there were moments of candor.

“I think we have less coverage from Darfur, print and broadcast media. I think sometimes we editorialize many issues in this part of the world, we feel that this is part of our pan-Arab world and we feel we should keep [our] hands off this,” a representative of Kuwait TV told his colleagues.

“If you watch any Arab station any night you will have reporting on Iraq, on Palestine, but it is rare to see news about Darfur. So no there isn’t enough,” concluded Samir Sabbah, head of Middle East media for Reuters TV.

The debate which began in Cairo between those who track the Darfur issue and those who covered it, continued in Abu Dhabi. And once more Al Jazeera was in the crosshairs. “Al Jazeera sees itself as voice of Muslims and Arabs in the world, but why don’t they implement this policy in Darfur? Why don’t they tell us it’s Muslims killing Muslims?” asked Hasbani of International Crisis Group.

Al Jazeera’s Aref Hijjawi defended his channel’s coverage. “We always talk about Darfur and we do our best. Darfur is not easy to access. Darfur in the media is a political issue. And the documentary recently transmitted by Al Jazeera clarified that there is petrol in the issue.”

Western and Arab broadcasters alike bemoaned the difficulties they face in getting crews into Darfur. “It’s not very easy. You might get as far as Khartoum and never get in,” explained Anna Williams, the planning editor at BBC World. She said the BBC’s Khartoum correspondent had not been able to access Darfur in more than six months and now had to pull out of the country after his work permit was revoked by the government.

“The interpretation of ‘difficult’ is relative to the expectations of people,” the head of Sudan TV shot back. “Darfur is full of media people.”

“There are times when we feel the authorities in Sudan are very supportive of our work but that doesn’t sometimes tally with the reaction we get sometimes locally from the security people,” Hosam El Sokkari, head of BBC Arabic, interjected.

Octavia Nasser, Middle East editor at CNN, agreed. “When you talk about access, it depends on who you ask. Is it easy to get to Darfur, yes and no. We live in a dangerous world we are all covering. Access is difficult, but it’s attainable. We all have different standards for access. We have to worry about security of correspondents, security of crews. While someone may give us a pass, we need to weight different things.” Abu Dhabi television trumpeted the fact that its documentary unit had just returned from Darfur, but others quickly pointed out the crew had traveled on a Sudanese government-escorted tour.

A new report on Darfur from Reporters sans Frontiers talks of a “bureaucratic fence” that is blocking access, where “the usual red-tape is complicated by the Sudanese government’s arbitrary measures” that includes blacklisting of news organizations and individual reporters.” Meanwhile, those reporters who approach the story from Chad often end up basing their reports solely on the word of refugees, thus producing stories that are “inevitably incomplete” and often “misrepresent reality”

Even so, RSF adds, despite the stereotype that Sudan is “a land of massacres, a terra incognita in which the 21st century’s first genocide is unfolding in Darfur, out of sight, without foreigners reporting what is happening, without any Sudanese voicing criticism,” the reality is much more complicated, with even some Sudanese newspapers producing coverage that is highly critical of the government and giving an outlet to opposition “voices that find it hard to make themselves heard outside Sudan.”

But not everyone bemoans a lack of coverage. For at least one person at the Abu Dhabi conference, it wasn’t a question of not enough coverage, but of too much. “Darfur has pre-occupied every person in the world,” said Sudanese social scientist Dr. Mahmoud Majout Haroun. “The definition of Sudan is Darfur. The media has created a problem. There is a dramatization and a magnification of the situation. It is merely a media situation now. There is coverage which is more than any event in the third world.”

Between self-congratulatory pats on the back from representatives of companies as disparate as Fox and Al Jazeera, there was a general acknowledgement from Arab broadcasters that Darfur suffers from the same subtle racist overtones that colors US coverage of sub-Saharan Africa, the perception that, in the brutal newsroom maxim, it’s just ‘more flies on black faces;’ just another interminable African conflict.

In fact, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, unveiled a new survey that found that more than 80 percent of the Arab public in four Arab countries believes pan-Arab satellite channels should devote more coverage to Darfur. “The myth that Arabs don’t care about Darfur is just that, a myth,” Zogby told the broadcasters.

That may be so, but some Sudanese journalists are still skeptical that their Arab colleagues will give Darfur more than a glancing look. In Cairo, columnist Warrag used Auschwitz as an analogy for Arab media denial of the reality in Darfur. “Can you imagine having your village burned and people say nothing happened to you?”

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves—any coverage of the conflict is fraught with practical issues. It’s often dangerous, it saps resources and access is difficult. But it’s a story we must cover,” CNN’s Nasser told the Abu Dhabi gathering.

Andrew Simmons of Al Jazeera English said Western and Arab journalists alike—“regardless of your branding”—have a responsibility to take a more comprehensive look at the conflict. “It is a great TV picture to look at Darfur,” he said. “But we have a responsibility to our viewers to analyze, explain, to further the political debate over Darfur.”

Which begged the ultimate question raised earlier in Cairo by an angry and frustrated representative of the Darfur Liberation Front: “Arab mass media talk about journalists being killed in Iraq. But why don’t you send journalists to be killed in Darfur?”-------------------------More from Arab Media & Society:

Democratic voters were about 55% black vs. 43% white (1% Hispanic) ... and--this is striking--61% female vs. 39% male. Obama won 54% of both male and female voters. Obama's support was strongest among younger voters, but he won a majority in every age category except 65 and older. (For more detailed results from the exit polls, see HERE.)

Once again, Democratic turnout exceeded Republican turnout. Over 520,000 votes were cast in the Democratic primary, compared with about 446,000 votes in last Saturday's Republican primary. Furthermore, voter turnout in today's Democratic primary was about 85% higher than in the 2004 Democratic primary, in which about 280,000 people voted.

Barack Obama on solidarity, citizenship, anti-semitism, & the legacy of Martin Luther King

It has taken me a little while to get around to posting the remarkable address, half sermon and half campaign speech, that Barack Obama delivered last Sunday--the day before Martin Luther King Day--at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. This is, of course, the church where King's father (Martin Luther King, Sr.) was the pastor, and where King himself began his ministry.

More than most of Obama's speeches, this talk was delivered in the language and with the cadences of the black church--to an extent that becomes vividly clear if you watch this video. But at the same time, like many of King's speeches, it carried a political message aimed at American society as a whole, one that effectively blended the languages of Biblical prophecy and of democratic activism.

It's worth reading Obama's speech as a whole (and/or watching the video). But let me mention just a few of its more striking features.

=> Its central message emphasizes what I think is one of Obama's greatest strengths--namely, that he is not afraid to appeal to a politics of solidarity, national community, and the common good. This aspect of Obama's approach is precisely what makes some people uneasy, and perhaps they have good reasons for feeling that way in Obama's case, but rejecting this kind of message out of hand is a very damaging mistake.

For decades, too many alleged "progressives" have shied away from thinking or talking in terms of community and the common good in the pseudo-sophisticated but entirely misleading belief that only interest-group politics is "realistic," or the alternative belief that only the most balkanized forms of "identity politics" are progressive, or odd combinations of the two. In the process, they have unilaterally surrendered a central animating principle of active democratic citizenship and, at the same time, foolishly allowed Reagan and other Republicans to hijack the political language of the common good.

Of course, it is true that the rhetoric of solidarity and the common good can be bogus, self-indulgent, and ideologically mystifying--if it is empty of practical content, uncritical, and undemanding. But Obama understands that, too.

[O]n the eve of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, at a time when many were still doubtful about the possibilities of change, a time when those in the black community mistrusted themselves, and at times mistrusted each other, King inspired with words not of anger, but of an urgency that still speaks to us today:

"Unity is the great need of the hour" is what King said. Unity is how we shall overcome. [....]

Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny. [....]

Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we've come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We've come to believe that racial reconciliation can come easily [....] All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price.

But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes – a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts. [....] But if changing our hearts and minds is the first critical step, we cannot stop there. [....]

The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country's ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina. [....] All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal the will to break its grip.

That is how we will bring about the change we seek. That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. [....] He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

That is the unity – the hard-earned unity – that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope – the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before. [....]

So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.

In terms of the contrasting political styles of the Clinton and Obama campaigns, I think it is fair to say that Clinton has mostly cast herself as the candidate of interest-group liberalism, while Obama has cast himself as the candidate of republican virtue and national community. In doing so, whether or not Obama ultimately wins the Democratic nomination, he has added a valuable and exciting dimension to the political discussion.

=> Obama also used this appeal for solidarity as the context in which to criticize homophobia, anti-semitism, and anti-immigrant xenophobia within the African-American community. The way he did it was both morally forthright and politically intelligent--especially since he conveyed the sense that he really meant it.

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

I think Mark Kleiman put it correctly: "This is very different from a 'Sister Souljah' moment. Obama is speaking home truths to a home audience, in language designed to appeal to them and not to show outsiders how tough he is." It's worth remembering that Martin Luther King explicitly and forcefully criticized anti-semitism, not under pressure to do so but spontaneously, in ways that now seem exotic. If Obama wants to take up King's mantle in this regard, as in others, that will be altogether a Good Thing.

(A week and a half ago, when Obama was publicly questioned about the fact that his church had recently honored the notorious anti-semite Louis Farrakhan with a major award, a number of Obama's self-styled defenders reacted with absurd and often disgraceful outbursts claiming that it was inherently illegitimate and even racist to raise such questions. I hope at least some of them now realize that Obama's calm and forthright response to the issue of black anti-semitism, both in the public statement he immediately released and then in this speech, has made them look pretty silly.)

=> With this speech, in short, Obama once again demonstrated that he is an exceptionally classy political figure. Read the whole thing (below).

--Jeff Weintraub=========================The text of Barack Obama's address to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday, January 20, 2008, as prepared for delivery:

The Scripture tells us that when Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the gates of Jericho, they could not enter. The walls of the city were too steep for any one person to climb; too strong to be taken down with brute force. And so they sat for days, unable to pass on through.

But God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city, and on the seventh day he told them that when they heard the sound of the ram's horn, they should speak with one voice. And at the chosen hour, when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

There are many lessons to take from this passage, just as there are many lessons to take from this day, just as there are many memories that fill the space of this church. As I was thinking about which ones we need to remember at this hour, my mind went back to the very beginning of the modern Civil Rights Era.

Because before Memphis and the mountaintop; before the bridge in Selma and the march on Washington; before Birmingham and the beatings; the fire hoses and the loss of those four little girls; before there was King the icon and his magnificent dream, there was King the young preacher and a people who found themselves suffering under the yoke of oppression.

And on the eve of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, at a time when many were still doubtful about the possibilities of change, a time when those in the black community mistrusted themselves, and at times mistrusted each other, King inspired with words not of anger, but of an urgency that still speaks to us today:

"Unity is the great need of the hour" is what King said. Unity is how we shall overcome.

What Dr. King understood is that if just one person chose to walk instead of ride the bus, those walls of oppression would not be moved. But maybe if a few more walked, the foundation might start to shake. If a few more women were willing to do what Rosa Parks had done, maybe the cracks would start to show. If teenagers took freedom rides from North to South, maybe a few bricks would come loose. Maybe if white folks marched because they had come to understand that their freedom too was at stake in the impending battle, the wall would begin to sway. And if enough Americans were awakened to the injustice; if they joined together, North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then perhaps that wall would come tumbling down, and justice would flow like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.

We have an empathy deficit when we're still sending our children down corridors of shame – schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education.

We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can't afford a doctor when their children get sick.

We have a deficit in this country when there is Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others; when our children see nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree today, in the present, in the twenty-first century.

We have a deficit when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of our cities; when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur; when young Americans serve tour after tour of duty in a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged.

And we have a deficit when it takes a breach in our levees to reveal a breach in our compassion; when it takes a terrible storm to reveal the hungry that God calls on us to feed; the sick He calls on us to care for; the least of these He commands that we treat as our own.

So we have a deficit to close. We have walls – barriers to justice and equality – that must come down. And to do this, we know that unity is the great need of this hour.

Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we've come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We've come to believe that racial reconciliation can come easily – that it's just a matter of a few ignorant people trapped in the prejudices of the past, and that if the demagogues and those who exploit our racial divisions will simply go away, then all our problems would be solved.

All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price.

But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes – a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.

It's not easy to stand in somebody else's shoes. It's not easy to see past our differences. We've all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart – that puts up walls between us.

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others – all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face – war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

But if changing our hearts and minds is the first critical step, we cannot stop there. It is not enough to bemoan the plight of poor children in this country and remain unwilling to push our elected officials to provide the resources to fix our schools. It is not enough to decry the disparities of health care and yet allow the insurance companies and the drug companies to block much-needed reforms. It is not enough for us to abhor the costs of a misguided war, and yet allow ourselves to be driven by a politics of fear that sees the threat of attack as way to scare up votes instead of a call to come together around a common effort.

The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country's ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina.

And that is what is at stake in the great political debate we are having today. The changes that are needed are not just a matter of tinkering at the edges, and they will not come if politicians simply tell us what we want to hear. All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal the will to break its grip.

That is how we will bring about the change we seek. That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. He did it with words – words that he spoke not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner.

He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

That is the unity – the hard-earned unity – that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope – the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.

The stories that give me such hope don't happen in the spotlight. They don't happen on the presidential stage. They happen in the quiet corners of our lives. They happen in the moments we least expect. Let me give you an example of one of those stories.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organizes for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She's been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and the other day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake.

And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta.

And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia.

And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down. The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down. That is our hope – but only if we pray together, and work together, and march together.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone

In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.

So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research.. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and is currently a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)